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COMMENT How do you fund massive upgrades? I was interested to read the knee-jerk reaction to the Panama Canal authorities' transiting fee hike announced a couple of weeks ago. This falls hard on the heels of the Suez Canal Authority's announcement of a transit price rise, which is due to kick in this April. As both have announced huge upgrading plans, why did this come as such a surprise? Perhaps it was the severity of the rises that caught most shipping organisations and their members by surprise. What happens at Suez has much more affect on the tanker and gas industry than what happens at Panama. However, the Panamanians could narrow the gap after 2014 when in theory we could see almost fully laden suezmaxes and certainly aframaxes transiting down to their marks. New trade routes will undoubtedly open up, most notably from the Caribbean to the US and South America west coasts and across the Pacific, giving Chavez the opportunity of lifting much more oil cheaply to China from his Venezuelan oil fields, if he's still around by then. What seems to have got everybody's back up is that between 2007 and 2009, the rate for tankers transiting the Panama Canal will go up by 34% to $3.98 per tonne from today's $2.96 per tonne. Today, the Canal is mainly used by chemical and products tankers of up to panamax dimensions. There are very few crude oil tankers in this sector, most being somewhat larger. A new Panama Canal will mean that the chemical tanker boys and girls will no longer have to rely on 32 m beam parcel tankers. In fact, the products sector had already gone aframax several years ago. However, the chemical tanker operators rely on the Panama Canal for their virtual round-the -world liner services, much the same as the containership operators used to before the advent of the so called post-panamax box ship As for the Suez Canal the percentage rise for tankers is only 3.73%. Unlike Panama, tankers already account for the largest number of transits. The detractors will argue that the 2006 figures showed that the Canal recorded a record $3.8 bill revenue from the more than 680 mill tonnes of cargo that moved through the waterway. Suez is looking at accepting fully laden VLCCs, whereas at present a pipeline operates the length of the canal with terminals at each end. Of course, before we see a rush of larger tanker tonnage queuing at the entrances of the canals, the calculators will be out in the brokers and operators offices working out the latest cost of fuel oil, transit fees etc against steaming around the two capes. The Black Sea and the US east coast will always be hampered by draught restrictions of around 15 m. The Turkish authorities have already banned VLCC traffic from the Bosporus and we have recently seen rising waiting times at both entrances of the narrow waterway that bisects Istanbul as the Turks struggle to cope with the shear volume of tanker traffic lifting Russian crude in aframax and suezmax hulls. Another canal boasting the largest number of transits is the Kiel Canal. This waterway has benefited from the upturn in the economies of the countries bordering the Baltic Sea and the Finnish Gulfs. However, it is restricted to vessels of up to panamax size and around 10 m draught. No doubt the Panamanians will come in for a bit of stick at the forthcoming CMA and Intertanko functions to be held in the US next month. At CMA there is a session devoted to the Panama Canal where the administrators will explain their masterplan and how they are going to fund it. A public hearing has been called by the ACP, the canal's administrator, to take place on 14th March to discuss the transit cost rises. The Panamanians will probably come to both meetings cap in hand! TO Identifying the Risk Risk assessment, or lack of it, was high on the agenda at TANKEROperator’s recent conference in Limassol. Fortunately, by and large, the tanker industry has taken in the concept of assessment, which forms an integral part of TMSA. Accidents will happen to the best of us, but the key is how you handle an incident and learn by it. Risk assessment is closely allied to safety management. In fact they could be taken as more or less the same thing. If you successfully identify and manage a risk, the odds are that you are running a relatively safe operation. As chairman Dimitris Lyras put it "Safety management is not all about hard hats and the right shoes, it is ensuring that today's tankers are safely operated." He gave the example of BP's problems in Texas as an operation having "no risk management." During the conference the speakers from two of the leading Cypriot-based shipmanagement companies gave an overview of their companies approach to safety management and identifying the risks. Such phrases as 'allocation of responsibility', 'failure to follow procedures', 'analyse all the critical data', 'refresh assessments', 'use preventive maintenance' and many more were thrown up. A leading class society introduced a risk assessment tool, whereby all the data relevant to a certain vessel is kept on a database and analysed with the 'critical' items identified. The better the equipment is monitored, the better knowledge you will have of a possible failure, BV said. To a large extent it is a question of change management, that is getting shore staff and seafarers to change the way they think, therefore the way they act. An interesting comment came from the floor from a senior shipmanager, who claimed that TMSA was invented by bigness, ie the oil majors, for bigness, ie those companies that had the resources to implement it. Lyras complained that thus far, there had been no feedback from OCIMF on TMSA, although obviously individual tanker concerns were talking with their principals on a one to one basis. Despite some misgivings most people who have discussed TMSA with TANKEROperator said it was a good idea and have launched themselves into it with some enthusiasm, which this writer admits, took him somewhat by surprise. We can now all look forward to InterManager's list of KPIs. TO 02 TANKEROperator • March 2007
INDUSTRY - NEWS Letter to the Editor Dear Sir, I have noticed that there is an increasing demand for tankers to change their summer deadweight (and increase the corresponding freeboard) in order to be allowed alongside certain berths - of course this is a complete nonsense since the only thing that changes is some paintwork on the ship's side. Regrettably this additional paintwork is often performed under far from safe conditions with sailors working over the ships side, as for accuracy, that's anyone's guess. What's even more regrettable, those requiring this change obviously just don't understand. It could be argued that changing deadweight would make a difference at a loading terminal, a sort of quasi legal restraint on the master on how much he can load, though I've seldom heard of a vessel loading more than their voyage orders dictate. In any case under most flags, the master can change the deadweight and corresponding freeboard up and down at the stroke of a pen in the Official Log Book. What is even more ridiculous is that the deadweight is not even mentioned on the new, shiny, normally 'short term' loadline certificate. I once had the pleasure of insisting to a senior class surveyor (to his absolute horror) that he amend the deadweight in the IOPP, Safcon and Safety Equipment certificates also, three of the few documents on a tanker where the deadweight is officially mentioned. So, apart from being a nice little earner for the classification societies, the exercise of changing a tanker's deadweight is, in reality completely futile. I have thought about advocating maximum displacement as more suitable restraint to put on a vessel, but I fear that concept would be lost on those most responsible for this latest craze. Yours etc, Capt. Graeme W. McNaught. MRIN, MNI. 8 Kalypsous Glyfada Athens +30 6937404088 100 % safety – not only with smooth seas. Whether tankers, container ships or cruise liners: SAACKE MARINE SYSTEMS offers made-to-measure burner and boiler systems for each vessel type, particularly where safety is all-decisive. One convincing example is the gas combustion unit (GCU), especially developed for installation on LNG carriers. This innovation is space-saving and at the same time extremely safe, even under most severe conditions. SAACKE MARINE SYSTEMS – surely as individual as your fleet. SAACKE GmbH · Südweststrasse 13 · 28237 Bremen · GERMANY · Phone: +49 - 421 - 64 95 0 Fax: +49 - 421 - 64 95 363 · E-Mail: marine@saacke.de · www.saacke-marine-systems.com March 2007 • TANKEROperator 03
Page 1 and 2: TANKEROperator MARCH 2007 Features:
Page 3: TANKEROperator Vol 6 No 2 Digital S
Page 7 and 8: INDUSTRY - NEWS Karl Lumbers - Redu
Page 9 and 10: A more technologically advanced tug
Page 11 and 12: INDUSTRY - MARKETS available, the r
Page 13 and 14: Material costs Scheduling Productiv
Page 16 and 17: INDUSTRY - CYPRUS REPORT Limassol
Page 18 and 19: INDUSTRY - US REPORT Is shipping a
Page 20 and 21: INDUSTRY - US REPORT Cash in the ba
Page 22 and 23: INDUSTRY - CMA/INTERTANKO REPORT It
Page 24: INDUSTRY - CMA/INTERTANKO REPORT ch
Page 27 and 28: Winner - Sea Trade, Dubai Internati
Page 30: INDUSTRY - SHIPMANAGEMENT employmen
Page 33 and 34: TECHNOLOGY - NAVAIDS What’s the l
Page 35 and 36: TECHNOLOGY - NAVAIDS Integrated bri
Page 37 and 38: in marine fuels Sorry we couldn’t
Page 39 and 40: One pump One tank One supplier Fran
Page 41 and 42: TECHNOLOGY - SHIP TO SHIP TRANSFER
Page 43 and 44: CAPITAL LINK FORUM Invest in Intern

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